Saturday, 26 May 2012

It's been almost a year since the release of the original Optimus 3D from LG, and in that time we've been watching 3D technology continue to evolve. Undoubtedly you've seen the changes in your local cinema, and even your living room, if you happen to have a 3DTV.

The Samsung I667 Focus 2 for AT&T is the third LTE addition to the carrier's impressive Windows Phone lineup. However, in order to avoid clashing with the platform heavyweights - the Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan II - the Korean offering undercuts both in terms of specifications and price.

According to a leaked screenshot by the MobileSyrup.com, the Samsung Galaxy S III is expected to go on sale in Canada on June 20. The screenshot says 'Pre-order today', although there is no way to tell when exactly 'today' is.

We can also see names of the four major Canadian carries, including Rogers, Bell, Telus and Virgin Mobile who will be selling the phone on launch day.

The world-wide edition of the Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos is now official.It's been a while since we saw the dual-mode version of the phone get announced for India. Now we finally have the two-SIM-slot variety intended for for international GSM markets.

A couple of days ago we ran a story that stated the Carla update for Nokia Belle has been cancelled. However, we have now been contacted by Nokia regarding this matter, stating that this is not the case at all.

What we know as Carla was essentially the codename for Belle Feature Pack 1. According to the Nokia employee who spoke to us, the Carla update, or Belle FP1 as it will be known as, is not cancelled and will start rolling out shortly.

After the announcement of the ICS-running HTC Desire C (powered by a single-core 600MHz CPU), every time the dual-core Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 came up there was someone to ask “why is the more powerful phone running Gingerbread and not Ice Cream Sandwich?”.

Here's the promo video in question, the money shot is at 0:14.

A leaked promo video for the Ace 2 suggests there might be some hope though. The video labels the phone “ICS upgradeable”, but neglects to mention when that might happen.

In an unsurprising turn of events, the meeting between the CEOs of Apple and Samsung at the request of the court failed to achieve its desired purpose, as the two companies couldn't come to an agreement.

The meeting was attended by Apple's CEO Tim Cook and Samsung's CEO Choi Gee-sung and head of the mobile division, Shin Jong-kyun and lasted for nine hours on Monday and seven hours on Tuesday. It was presided by Judge Joseph C. Spero and took place at the request of U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh last month.

Thursday, 24 May 2012

Here's another proof that the hardware QWERTY droids are not completely on the way out, folks. LG LS860 has leaked in a blurry shot. The device, which is internally known as "Cayenne", is bound to hit Sprint Wireless's LTE network later this year.

"Despite their name, smartphones are rather dumb devices. My smartphone doesn't know anything more about me than when I got it," he added.

"All of these devices will come to know us as individuals, will very much tailor themselves to us."

The research, to be carried out by the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence along with specialists from the Technion in Haifa and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is aimed at enabling new applications, such as small, wearable computers that can enhance daily life.

AT&T announced the latest addition to its prepaid lineup - the slide-out QWERTY packing Samsung Galaxy Appeal. The smartphone will be available at Walmart stores first, in the beginning of next month, priced at $150.More AT&T GoPhone retail locations will follow in July.

The specs of the Samsung Galaxy Appeal include a 800MHz ARM Cortex A5 CPU and Qualcomm MSM7225A chipset. There is 512MB of RAM and 1.8GB of built-in memory, which can be further expanded via a microSD card.

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

In case you live in Germany and have a knack for high mobile network speeds, we have some good news for you. The LTE sporting HTC One XL is bound to make a landing on a trio of local carriers, which include Vodafone, O2 and Deutsche Telecom.

As you probably know by now, the HTC One XL is the Snapdragon S4 packing sibling of the NVIDIA Tegra 3 featuring global version. The Qualcomm made silicon enables the One XL to get along with LTE networks - a fact, which we know already from our review of the HTC One X for AT&T, which is equipped in the same fashion.

All Symbian fans and users might want to sit down while reading this. According to the Product Marketing Manager for Nokia South Europe Mathias Fiorin, Symbian Carla has been cancelled.Nokialino, an Italian Nokia fan site, claims to have spoken with Mathias Fiorin, so the infomation should be pretty accurate.

He says Carla is now known as FP1. But it is not just a name change - both upcoming Feature Packs won't bring major updates, HD screens and dual-core CPU support. Basically Belle is the last major Symbian release the world will get.

HTC has released a list of phones that they will be updating to Android 4.0 this year. Along with the names of the phones, they also mention the time period during which you can expect the update to arrive for the respective handsets.

From the list, the only phones that have already received the update or are in the process of receiving it are the fourSensation handsets and the HTC Vivid. Other noteworthy phones in the list includes the EVO 3D and Rezound, which will get the update by June-July and the Thunderbolt, which will get the update by July-August.

It's also nice to see older phones like the Desire S and theIncredible S on the list as well, with both getting the update by June-July.

Nokia has announced that it is dropping support for the Skype app for Windows Phone on their recently announced Lumia 610. The reason for this, according to them, is the below par user experience of using the app on this particular device.

The following is the full explanation from Nokia regarding the matter:

Microsoft has announced that starting today, the Windows Marketplace will require all phones to be running on the Windows Phone 7.5 software. This update was issued last fall and was made available to all the Windows Phone devices.

Unless you have the latest update installed, you will not be able to download or update your apps. You will still be able to access the Marketplace but will get an error every time you try to do the aforementioned tasks.

The Samsung Galaxy S III has arrived in Dubai a week earlier than expected and is already on sale for $666.

This has been confirmed by a vigilantReddit user who noticed an "Available Today" sign under the S III name in a mall store in Dubai. Speaking to an employee he gathered that the store has plenty of Galaxy S III units in stock and all being white variants (no word on which internal storage version it was but we're guessing 16GB).

Other users have also found the phone available (and purchased it) but for around $680. We guess a hefty bunch of people who pre-ordered the Galaxy S III will be less than impressed right about now.

It looks like someone else got their hands on an Xperia GX in a Japanese DoCoMo store, and decided to take a video showing off the 13MP camera.

Like the still image samples, the video is taken indoors, and does not show much in the way of the full capabilities of the sensor. Nevertheless, it is of full 1080p resolution.

The Sony Xperia GX has garnered some criticism for reportedly being a Japan-only device, despite somehints that an international version may be in the works. Here's to hoping that we'll see the slick device in our neck of the woods someday.

Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Facebook shares sank 11 percent in the first day of trading without the full support of the company's underwriters, leaving some investors down almost 25 percent from where they were Friday and driving others to switch back to more established stocks.

Facebook's debut was beset by problems, so much so that Nasdaq said on Monday it was changing its IPO procedures. That may comfort companies considering a listing, but does it little for Facebook, whose lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley, had to step in and defend the $38 offering price on the open market.

Even so, one source said Morgan Stanley's own brokers were at one point "ranting and raving" about glitches that left unclear what trades had actually been executed.

In the run-up to Facebook's $16 billion IPO, Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the deal, unexpectedly delivered some negative news to major clients: The bank's consumer Internet analyst, Scott Devitt, was reducing his revenue forecasts for the company.

The sudden caution very close to Facebook's initial public offering - while an investor road show was under way - was a big shock to some, said two investors who were advised of the revised forecast.

They said it might have contributed to the weak performance of Facebook shares, which sank on Monday and Tuesday - their second and third days of trading - to end more than 18 percent below the IPO price. The $38-per-share IPO price valued Facebook at $104 billion.

Google Inc completed its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc and named a new chief executive for the cellphone maker, who vowed to focus on "fewer, bigger bets."

Google, which made the deal to gain access to Motorola's vast trove of technology patents, said on Tuesday that Motorola Chief Executive Sanjay Jha has stepped down and has been succeeded by Dennis Woodside, former president of Google's Americas region.

Woodside oversaw planning for the Motorola integration, according to Google. Jha will be retained to help manage a transition period.

The deal closing came just days after the companies won approval for the acquisition from the Chinese government. European and U.S. regulators approved the deal in February.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace 2, a budget dual-core droid, has gone on sale in the UK and in Germany. Besides the dual-core processor, the Ace 2 also brings a bigger, better screen, more RAM and built-in storage over its predecessor. You can check out our preview for more info.

Anyway, in the UK the Galaxy Ace 2 can be had from Carphone Warehouse on contract (18 and 24 month contracts are available) on Vodafone, Orange, O2 and Talkmobile. The price starts at free with £20 a month (for 24 months) or £36 a month (for 12 months). Phones4Ualso has several on-contract deals.

If you don't want a new contract, Amazon UK will set you up with a new SIM-free Galaxy Ace 2 for £215.

Bluetooth SIG approval pages have confirmed the existence and model numbers of the AT&T and T-Mobile US versions of the Samsung Galaxy S III.

The AT&T model number is SGH-I747 and should be based on the Snapdragon S4 chipset with a dual-core Krait CPU instead of the Cortex-A9 found on the international version. The reason for the switch is once again the lack of native LTE support on the Exynos 4 Quad.

Monday, 21 May 2012

Three months following US and EU approval, China has given Google's Motorola acquisition the green light.

Now that all of the regulatory red tape has been removed, Google say that the deal will be finalized on their end by early next week. Such a quick timeframe indicates that this was indeed the last barrier that Google needed to overcome in order to finalize things, having already received joint approval from the European Union and US Department of Justice back in February.

The availability of three of Sony's latest Xperia phones has widened to include Europe, it is getting a foothold in the States too and various other countries as well. The Sony Xperia U and P have been available in Hong Kong and Taiwan for a while now, but they've finally traveled west.

Here's a list of e-tailers that offer the Xperia U, Xperia P and Xperia sola that we've found so far. The list isn't complete, so drop us a line in the comments if you find more.

Sunday, 20 May 2012

The first camera samples from the 13MP camera of the Sony Xperia GX are out (through unofficial means, but still). The shots themselves are taken with an pre-release unit and indoors under not-so-good lighting, so it's too early to be talking image quality, but this leak still holds some very interesting details.